18-months old Sitara breezing through wins! Here, just one short of becoming AKC Champion of Record.

Magnificent Sitara, structurally perfect, with the sweetest temperament , and a head "to launch a thousand ships", as her breeder, late John Donner of Donnereign Samoyeds, used to say!

Contact: silverfrostsamoyeds@gmail.com

phone: 1-301-570-0022

Copyright: Zehra R. Post.

Website creation: Zehra R. Post Photos: Zehra R. Post

C

May 15, 2013

My Sitara is gone......

Up until four days back she was getting along almost normally, eating well, sleeping soundly, active and alert, albeit on strong pain-killers and

heavy-duty anti-oxidants and other vitamins and nutritional supplements.

The quality of her life was good though and she was enjoying playing and

rough-housing with the pack.

Then, on Mother's Day, she took a turn for the worse overnight. Even though I increased the frequency of the pain-killers they didn't seem to do much good.

She was in terrible pain from the malignant tumor that had by now taken over her entire bladder.

She was moaning and crying and trembling and showing me her belly.

I could not watch her suffer any more, could not bear her cries of pain.

All sorts of treatments and my constant care-giving over the last eighteen months had proven futile. There was nothing more anyone could do for her. Letting her hurt anymore became cruel, sadistic and selfish.

Yesterday I called my son at the office and he came over right away, about an hour and quarter's drive. The vet cleared all her appointments and took Sitara in.

Siti sat next to me with my arms around her, trusting me and loving me and being loved by me. She was sedated and then given the juice intravenously. Within seconds she was gone peacefully.

So over the rainbow passed another gentle, loving, exquisitely beautiful soul who gave me her love and trust fully and unconditionally to the very last.

02-06-2002 -- 05-14-2013

She was gentle, loving, loyal, caring. When, a few weeks after

Rainbow's birth, Pulchra started staying away from the whelping box,

Sitara just stepped in and started taking care of the pup. She groomed him,

trained him and practically raised him. He became

her favorite playmate as he grew up.

Not even once in all her eleven years (what fleeting hours!) did she have any altercation within her pack or with any other animal or human.

It was a privilege and sheer good luck to be able to hold her in my arms

and to enjoy the beauty of her face and specially of those jet-black, slanted and bright eyes that reflected every emotion she felt, and to see in them

her love for me, constant and true.

Over the coming months and years I shall eventually find it in my heart

to fold away her empty crate from among her family's row of crates,

and shall not bring out her empty bowl with the bowls of her pack at meal times. Over time I shall accept her loss, with only a tug at my heart at her thought.